Girls, Opportunity And (Still) The Leadership Gap

If we’re all in it for girls, we all win. This isn’t about girls over boys or women over men. It’s about curing diseases, launching industries, creating jobs, solving social problems. This doesn’t require legislation or some heavy-handed approach. It requires you and your commitment.

By Anna Maria Chávez

What a remarkable time to be a girl in this country. Think about it: She could grow up to develop the next great computer gadget or breakthrough drug therapy or even Hollywood blockbuster. This is a good and hopeful thing for her—and for us.

So what’s wrong?

The issue is that girls still don’t necessarily see this brave new world of opportunity translating into leadership positions for women. And it’s true. At this point, women make up only about 3% of the CEOs of publicly traded companies, and you could go across the various sectors and find much the same.

So one result is that too many girls end up opting out of those leadership opportunities that might someday allow them to have the wherewithal to launch that next tech startup or find that breakthrough cure. But the real question is this: As the world grows flatter, can we afford to have a generation of girls opt out?

We at Girl Scouts of the USA commissioned a study by GFK Roper, which we released today, that shows that nearly 3 in 5 girls think that women can certainly rise within the ranks of a company or organization, but only rarely will they get promoted to the top job. They also have a firm perception of the barriers women face. More than two-thirds of them believe that family responsibilities weigh women down more than men as they try to move up in their careers.

Not surprising, a vast majority of them (81%) believe that the workplace could do a better job of meeting the needs of their female workers.

All of this reinforces an emerging picture of how girls view themselves as leaders. A few years ago, our own Girl Scout Research Institute found that 61% of girls were either ambivalent about leadership or said it wasn’t important to them at all. Of the 39% of girls who weren’t disaffected, only one in five believed that she herself had what it took to lead.

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